


we are the flow

by AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)



Category: Shake It Out - Florence + the Machine (Song), Which Witch - Florence + the Machine (Song)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 07:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10566126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/AlexSeanchai
Summary: Magic is a curse and a choice, both sin and salvation.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karrenia_rune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/gifts).



> "We are the flow"—presented here as section dividers in bold—is a witchy chant attributed to Shekhinah Mountainwater. I've modified the text of the chant a little, to rhyme better and repeat less.

**We are the flow**

"Look," said Mama to Claire. "Not with your two eyes right here." Mama pointed, two-fingered, at her own two blue eyes. "With your eye right here." She poked herself in the middle of her forehead.

"I don't know how," Claire said.

"Start by imagining," Mama said. "What might you see?"

* * *

Anna watched as Mary looked around. "I see you," said Mary. "I see the hearth, and the stew pot, and the fire."

"Good," said Anna. "Now, pretend you see something more to the fire and the air. Something that glitters as I twist it into thread."

Mary squinted at the air between Anna's hands, where Anna was indeed twisting hanks of breeze into the beginnings of a charm—a reinforcement, as it happened, of the woven web that kept all eyes and ears from knowing what went on in this home this night. Anna liked to keep some things to herself.

"I don't know if I see it," Mary said. "I might?"

"Close your eyes," said Anna, and Mary did.

* * *

Claire closed her eyes when Mama said. It was easier to look for things with her third eye when her first two were shut, Mama had said—

The candle flame danced gold, though all else she could see was deep red.

* * *

**We are the ebb**

"Fine!" Claire shouted at Brad. "I'm done with you!"

Pressing the end-call button did not, somehow, have the same satisfaction as slamming a door in his face would have. Graceless man. Inconsiderate, selfish, _foolish_ , and she would probably never see a penny of child support.

She collapsed onto the sofa and wept for her younger self, so hopelessly in love with a handsome face. For her Mama, who had taught her the value of love—the love of a mother and child, rarer than diamonds; the love of two lovers, common as grass. For her Mama, who lay now under the grass, having commanded Claire not to use magic to save her.

For what might have been.

Well, she would just have to cut him out of her life and start again.

Claire struck a match and lit a candle, filled a bowl with tap water, and expertly spun the flame and the water into a charm. "I command you, O flame," she told the charm. "I command you, O spring. Find a way for me to prosper—"

* * *

"—that my daughter and I may live and live well, that our flames may always burn, that our wealth may always flow. So I command."

Anna dipped two fingers in her bowl of water and pinched out the flame, then took the bowl and poured its contents into the garden, turning loose the charm.

* * *

**We are the weavers**

That was _not_ Gloria. It looked like her to Claire's two eyes, but her third showed that this person glowed in red and black and gold. _Gloria_ 's aura of blue and green and goldenrod tended more to flow.

Claire silently spun a charm from the air and commanded it to protect her and doubly to protect her unborn child.

"Oh, that won't do you any good," said not!Gloria cheerily. "You learned it from me, after all." She bowed with all the formality one might use when addressing the Queen of England. "They call me Marion."

"No," said Claire, weaving the charm tighter, sturdier. "My mother taught me."

"Your mother learned from her mother," said Marion with an enigmatic smile. "She learned from her mother, and she from hers, all the way back to one Mary, who learned from her mother Anna, who learned from one—Marion."

* * *

"You will teach me," said Anna to Marion—how painful, this name, with little Mary sleeping so close. The succubus stood captive in Anna's trap outlined in nails of iron and grains of salt. "I will pay your price, I and I alone."

Anna would suffer, she knew, but till that moment when the deal came due, she would hope.

Marion smiled slowly. "That is the bargain, then? I accept. Come, kiss me to seal it."

* * *

**We are the web**

"I'll offer you a bargain," said Marion. "Give me your daughter and give up the magic your mother taught you, and I'll give you your freedom—no demon shall trouble you again, unless you yourself call to one of my kind."

"And if I don't accept?" asked Claire.

* * *

"Why, Anna." Marion smiled, predatory. "Would you refuse me, after you called me here?"

 _I can see no other way,_ Anna reminded herself.

* * *

**We are the spinners**

Anna hummed as she spun combed roving into wool thread, and with it earth and air into charm. _I command you, O mountain. I command you, O whirlwind. Protect my daughter. Protect all her children, and all their children, and all their children ever after. Protect my daughter. Protect all her children—_

* * *

_—and all their children, and all their children ever after,_ Claire scribbled on a paper she would later burn, as she examined the weave of the charm that guarded her, had guarded her mother, was meant to guard her child. It was fraying; was that how Marion had found them—or because Marion had found them? She needed to weave a new one.

* * *

**We are the thread**

Mary coughed forlornly. Anna replaced the folded damp rag on Mary's too-warm forehead with a freshly dampened, far cooler rag—paused, felt Mary's forehead. Was it warmer?

She had to do something. She had to. Else Mary would die, and Mary was all Anna had left. And it might be that only a miracle would save Mary—a miraculous work, or a work of magic.

There were no witches, that Anna knew of, in this village. But everyone from the baker to the priest talked about witches sometimes. They got their power from consorting with demons.

* * *

"Damn, girl," said Gloria to Claire, her aura dancing blue and green. "You do _not_ look so good."

"Tell me about it," said Claire. "Ever try to dance with the devil on your back and a baby on your front?"

Gloria laughed—she stopped mid-giggle and looked more closely at Claire. "I would like to pray to the goddess Brigid for your healing and your baby's, and your safety and your baby's. May I?"

" _Please,_ " Claire said fervently.

"And." Gloria hesitated. "May I cast a spell to those same ends?"

* * *

**We are the witches**

"What do you mean," Claire said slowly, "when you say 'spell'? From whom did you learn it?"

Escaping the trap set by one demon only to fall prey to another—

But Gloria answered, and Claire listened.

* * *

"That girl is a witch, I tell you!" proclaimed James, the smith's second son. "She bewitched me!"

Anna glanced toward Mary, at whom James was pointing. Mary was trying to look shocked and appalled and above all innocent. Anna, who knew her daughter's tricks from eighteen years' experience, thought it might even be working on most of the other villagers.

Most of them.

But the baker and her daughter, and two of the farmers, were looking at Mary with suspicion. And lurking at the back of the crowd, someone who looked impossibly like, yet was not, the smith…

Anna stepped between the accusing eyes and her daughter, silently commanding a charm spun of air to direct attention from Mary to Anna. "My daughter needs a husband, and no man in this town wants her of his own will," Anna called out. (This was not strictly true, she thought; whatever Mary had done, it would not have compelled James to do anything truly against his will.) "Accuse me if you will, but I do not regret what I have done."

Regrets, like old friends, were few, and she had, after all, kissed Marion.

* * *

**Back from the dead**

Mary had a bag packed and slung over her shoulder, most likely containing all those family belongings that could be carried so. She stood at the back of the crowd gathered around the post they had tied Anna to, around the pile of firewood on which Anna was bound.

A spark glittered at Mary's midsection: the beginnings of her daughter by James.

Anna said nothing, made no motion to indicate she knew Mary was there. Silence and shadow were the best protection Anna could give her daughter and granddaughter now.

There were many shadows, once the firewood caught.

* * *

Claire passed her sheet of paper over. Gloria read through it, smiled, and leaned over to kiss Claire's cheek. "Beautiful, love." She passed it back.

A deep breath in, and out, and in, and out. Claire, jumpy still, began to read her spell aloud:

"O Flame of Brigid, come to me,  
I call on you for aid."

Gloria struck a match and lit the candle.

"Your help safeguarding what is mine  
is all I ask of you."

Claire fed the first strand of Anna's fraying charm into the candle's fire. It caught like dried grass—perhaps Mama had been wrong about the value of love between lovers? Claire drew her mind back to the task.

"O Smith divine, of strong oak tree,  
please help me forge this blade,  
and I will build for You a shrine  
when soon my need is through."

The spell went on, a verse for Brigid as healer and mistress of the sacred well, a verse for Brigid as bard and weaver of sound. It wasn't, perhaps, poetry worthy of remembrance, but as Claire watched, it did as she asked: the spell built up around her, separately around her yet-unborn child, and also, though she hadn't asked this, around Gloria.

Protection—especially from the demon who called herself Marion. Health. Prosperity.

Claire wound the spell to a close, and breathed out.

"Good," said Gloria. "Looks solid."

"Good," echoed Claire. "Say, what even goes in a shrine to Brigid? Do I want one for each of Her aspects?"

Gloria laughed. "She won't mind only one—that's all you promised, after all."

Claire opened her mouth and felt her baby girl kick. She laid a hand on her abdomen, at just that spot. "Hi there, Anna," she murmured, and Gloria laid her hand on top of Claire's. "Anna Bridget, because you're the first of us to be born free."


End file.
